NHAI petition baseless: Jayanti Natrajan

NEW DELHI: The environment ministry, facing the awkward situation of being hauled to court by the National Highways Authority of India (NHAI), for long delays in approvals, says the petition by the government body is baseless as it has already addressed the issue.

NHAI has argued that companies were walking out of projects as delay in granting clearances for diversion of forest land was holding up environment approval for the entire project. As a result, the developer could not begin work even in the non-forest areas of the project.

"The NHAI petition ignores the environment ministry's order issued on January 7. I can't understand the basis of NHAI's demand. We have already agreed that road projects may be treated in a piecemeal manner, so work on non-forest areas can begin even as forest clearance for the project is being considered.

The ministry will submit the relevant orders to the court," a senior environment ministry official, who did not want to be identified, said.

Two days before NHAI approached the Supreme Court, the environment ministry issued an order to amend guidelines under the Forest Conservation Act, 1980. The Jan 7 order allows clearance for linear projects such as roads and railways to be considered and processed in a phased manner. This permits start of construction of linear projects such as roads, railways and transmission lines in the non-forest area once environmental clearance has been granted, even as clearance for the forest area is being considered.

Before this order, clearance for linear projects had to be processed in its entirety - work could not begin until both environment and forest approval were granted. The guidelines made it clear that "proposals in piecemeal should not be submitted".

The environment ministry has made it mandatory for project developers to provide an alternate alignment that doesn't involve diversion of forest land, as part of its original application. This will prevent a situation where the Forest Advisory Committee, which is the statutory body for granting forest clearances, is forced to divert forest land on the ground that money already invested in the non-forest section would go waste.

In the case of widening of existing roads, the project developer will have to abandon its plans in case the statutory body decides to not allow the diversion of forest land.

On Wednesday, the NHAI moved the Supreme Court forest bench, through law firm M V Kini and Associates, seeking to hasten forest clearances holding up road projects in the country.